Hallowhedon 2 Cosplay Experience

Last weekend was Hallowhedon 2, a 3-day unofficial convention celebrating the various TV shows created by Joss Whedon. It was also my first solo cosplay experience! Having previously cosplayed as a Lornette (with my mum) at the first Hallowhedon. I decided very early on that my Hallowhedon 2 cosplay would be Kaylee Frye.

Hallowhedon 2 Cosplay Experience

Cosplay is something I’d like to do more of so, for this convention, I went as Firefly mechanic Kaylee Frye. Played by the lovely Jewel Staite, who was also attending as a guest that weekend. But even before Jewel was announced as a guest, I knew I wanted to be Kaylee for the event.

I decided to cosplay her teddy bear overalls for the Halloween party. The hardest part of the costume (for me) was the sewing; the overalls needed altering—cutting the sleeves off, taking them in etc, and I’m not a natural seamstress. Thankfully my mum was on hand to help out. 🙂 I wanted the costume to be as screen accurate as possible.

The other difficult part was finding the exact bear patch. I knew it existed and trawled through zillions of cosplay sites trying to find a UK seller for it (or a USA seller with reasonable postage charges!). Luckily I found a re-listing on ebay.com by a seller that shipped to the UK for pretty cheap! 😀

Funnily the hardest parts of the costume were also the most fun. Besides getting to wear it at the convention of course. I also had a toy spanner that I carried around in true Kaylee fashion, she is a mechanic after all. The costume was finished just in time for the convention, with only two days to spare! … Nothing like the last minute.

Halloween party – Our Hallowhedon 2 Firefly cosplay group

The Halloween party started at around 20:30 on Saturday night and I’d plan to meet some other Firefly cosplayers at the party (Jayne and another Kaylee—pilot episode version). So we could have some photos taken together, as it turns out, we weren’t the only three in Firefly costumes!

First “Jayne” and I found a River, and got our picture taken with her, then more people asked for pictures so we posed for a few before finding another Kaylee (shout out to Carolyn – make sure you check out her Instagram: Casuna Cosplay). Then we found a Mal, then Wash, then another River, another Kaylee, Inara… you get the idea. We almost had a complete set (no Zoe, Simon or Sheperd Book, unfortunately).

Having taken a few photos inside, we went outside for more room and took pictures of our group, we also had a crowd of people wanting to take pictures too! Which was a bit surreal.

We then found another Kaylee in the dress from the episode ‘Shindig‘, she was adorable!

We also found ‘The hands of Blue’ and had pictures with them too. Although I’m not sure who’s decided for the photos to be taken in front of a mirror though! Sorry for the glare on this picture.

Sunday of the convention—Halloween

I decided to have a professional photo op with both Alan Tudyk (who plays Wash) then Jewel in my Kaylee costume. It was so comfy to wear that I proceeded to wear it all day (I wasn’t the only person in a costume—it was officially Halloween after all).

One comment on my cosplay came from the lovely Alan who in my photo op who said “Hey, it’s Kaylee and she’s in her work gear! Awesome!”, as I was walking up to him. He then proceeded to put his arm around me, Jewel, however, didn’t comment on the costume but acknowledged it with a nod and a grin. 🙂

For the rest of the day, I kept getting comments on my costume and was lucky enough to win a guest encounter with Jewel. For those that haven’t been to a fandom specific convention such as this, a guest encounter is where you and 11 other attendees, plus a specific guest, have a random natter while drinking tea and eating biscuits! We talked about her work, Firefly, Bones, Dollhouse, ourselves etc (her husband was also in the guest encounter).

I had a fantastic weekend and can’t wait for Hallowhedon 3 next year, why does October have to be so far away?! Convention blues are a real thing. 🙁 I guess you could relate it to ‘holiday blues’; you know that feeling when you’ve had a wonderful time away and then reality hits you when you’re back home?

Here are a couple more of our cosplay photos…